


Shared Dreams and Ducks

by easternfront



Series: On Our Sholders [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 19:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2633819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternfront/pseuds/easternfront
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment when Arthur the point man became just uncle Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Dreams and Ducks

Philippa was squirming in his lap and pointing out different things in the book spread between them. Her sounds came out as unformed words and Arthur tried his best to understand them. She was particularly interested in the yellow ducks that were placed around the small picture book:  
“Dooh!”  
“Yes! A duck and that is a fish.”  
“Fii.”  
“Yeah! A Fish.”

An unusually heavy rain was hitting the windows and the concrete patio outside. Every now and then a gush of wind brought more rain all the way to the screen door that let in a small shower of drops land into the light doormat.

Philippa kept flipping the pages back and forth and sometimes she’d look at Arthur with a wonder and astonishment when he’d say something about the animal she was pointing. She would touch Arthur's face and buttons and then return to the book. The small book was well read and some of the pages were folded several times. Some unrecognisable material had concreted at the back page and the page telling about pond life had definitely a good dose of strawberries in it.

The house was eerily quiet. Only the dishwasher Arthur had set running earlier made a humming noise in the kitchen. He still didn’t quite realize how and why he had agreed to be an emergency babysitter, but right now that role seemed to suit him nicely.

Earlier that morning he’d only decided to pop in unexpectedly because he’d gotten the early blueprints of the house he’d been planning to self-built by the beach up north and Mal had been very adamant that she’d want to see them right when he’d finished and had them printed out. For some reason he was dreading seeing Dom because he didn’t know if the man would be upset that his input hadn’t been asked at all.

Instead of walking in on a harmonious household he’d walked right in the middle of a mess. Phil was sitting in the middle of the hallway floor crying only in her diapers, Mal had been pacing around the living room with her ear attached to her phone and Dom was sitting by the computer looking at plane tickets.

“Oh it’s you.” Dom’s tired face greeted him at the door. “It’s Miles, he’s fallen on some stairs in their holiday home in Bordeaux and her mom is going nuts. Apparently we have to go the other side of the world...today. I just cannot find a flight with two seats next to each other and Mal doesn’t want to fly in separate seats because she thinks Phil is coming down with something.”

“Does it have to be today?” He was already reaching for his laptop, in sure knowledge that his business contact in American Airlines could get them as far as New York heading flight in the next two hours.

Dom shook his head and pointed towards Mal’s red and blotchy face trying to talk to her mother on the phone: “Talk to her first.”

“Yes...yes. But why don’t you ask them yourself? Well find someone? Find someone that speaks english or give the phone to someone right now and I’ll speak...mama?!” Charge it then...merde! Arthur!?” She ran to him and hugged him. “Dad was fixing the gutters at the cottage and fell from the ladders and mama is panicking. I need to go there but Dom says we cannot.”

“I said it’s better for us to be here so that we can…”  
“No! We will go. Did you find a flight?”  
“Not with seats next to each other. It’s summer, all flights are full and then some.”  
“A flight for me then! Why do you insist we live this far? You don’t just want to miss your conference today!”

She went to Philippa and picked her up:  
“Oh darling I left you sitting there on your own.”

Arthur moved next to the girls and took a hold of Mal’s shoulder:  
“You really think your mom needs you there? Is it serious?”  
“She said this would happen if we moved so far away. She said something would happen and I couldn’t be there for help.” Her anguish was catching Philippa and both mother and daughter were now crying.  
“Hey, hey there...then you go. Dom’s getting you a flight, right?” He shed a dark look towards the man.  
“Yes I will.”

Mal had taken a deep breath and kissed Philippa: “Mama is going away for few days but daddy’s going to be here. Mama has to go and see grandpapa, make sure he is OK.”

“There! Flight leaving at 12.15 from LAX, we might just make it on time. Go pack what you need.” Dom stood up from the table and walked over to them: “I’ll drive you there and Arthur can take care of Phil for today? Alright Mal?”

Mal had nodded quickly and handed Phil over to Arthur: “Yes, yes. Go to uncle Arthur.”  
She quickly ran to the other side of the house and Arthur could hear her banging the closet doors and drawers. Dom had vanished to the office and he was left standing in the middle of the floor with a small girl in his arms with a hefty amount of snot running down her face:  
“Oh dear. Should we do something about that?”

He walked over to the table and pulled a piece of kitchen paper and wiped Phil’s face clean. His blueprint casing made a clattering sound when it slid down from his shoulders to the floor and rolled under the table: “It looks like mama doesn’t have time to see those anyway.”

***

A long beep from the dishwasher indicated that the washing cycle had ended. CNN was showing the weather forecast in low volume. Phil had fallen asleep leaning into Arthur's side and her breathing came out in quick sniffles. She might be indeed coming down with something. He slowly laid her down on the furry rug in the middle of the living room and surrounded her with sofa cushions and covered her with a blanket.

He then emptied the dishwasher and just sat down by the kitchen table. The big open area was Dom's masterpiece of architecture which he had designed with his masters degree in Paris. The only problem had been, that the house was terribly American, too Californian, to be built anywhere in France where Mal had wanted to stay and raise her kids. So he'd bought a piece of land in the coastal California with the money his father had left him and slowly living in a small trailer watched his dream design being built.

She must love Dom terribly to move here, build a house and teach in a regular American college. Arthur walked up to the few carefully framed photos placed on the minimalistic shelves on the hallway walls. There was Mal and her younger sister with their mother, Dom's graduation picture, Miles and Mal at his fiftieth birthday party...and then a new one, one that Arthur hadn't seen before. It was him, Mal and Dom in the Azure's, all smiles and tanned from five years ago. Mal and Dom just off from their honeymoon, dragging Arthur away from the States for the second time in his life, first time without a personal assault rifle.

All expenses paid, if he'd just take part in Mal's experiment of PASIV treatment for PTSD sufferers. At the time he felt he needed no help, but Mal had seen it from afar, from the very first moment they had met in a dreamshare at a Virginia training camp. She was a civilian making sure the candidates transferred to there were mentally and physically stable to take part in a rehabilitating dreamshare.

After having spent six months in active duty he'd been shot through his left side by a friendly fire, taking out fragments from his ribs and intestines, but he still owed the government few years of duty. His high tolerance for anesthesia had been apparently noticed by some of the army doctors and he was sent to the Dreamshare unit for testing. There he was greeted by a wall of officers making him sign confidentiality agreements and a elegant french woman in charge of the candidates mental health. Since the equipment used at the time was Canadian owned she was coming with the machine, as she herself liked putting it.

Not only were they testing soldiers ability to kill and maim, they were also looking out if a stressed and traumatized mind could be healed faster after spending time in a dream. For countless of hours he and Mal spent creating worlds and places to spend time and talk about what had happened and what Arthur wanted to do with his life. By the end of the evaluation time they had spent more than three months together, just talking and creating things they both enjoyed.

He was then suddenly pulled from the project, sent back to the NCO office and gotten release papers with honors. He was thanked for his services and pushed out with a severance check and an acceptance letter to a local college and a full scholarship for the entire ride. Even before he'd gotten out from the base, Mal was waiting for him outside the compound in her small car filled with archive boxes and loose papers: "Get in now!" was all she needed to say to get Arthur to jump in without any questions.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that everything Mal had taken was in fact, completely stolen US government material, and that no way neither of them could ever work for the government or the army, ever.

***

He heard quiet ruffling from the living room and saw that Phil had sat up and looked confused. “Oh, you already woke up? Are you sure you’ve had enough sleep?”  
“Aatuh!”  
“Yes, Arthur. That’s me. Shall we eat something before daddy comes home? What would you like? A little yogurt or a banana?”

He lifted the warm girl to her arms and walked over to the fridge.  
“What about we go wild and have chocolate pudding? What do you say?”  
With a huge smile on her face she nodded and gave Arthur’s neck a hug:  
“Uncle Aatuh!”


End file.
